We touched down in the small airport in Phuket slightly
dazed from the late night prior in Bangkok, followed by the half a day of
travel. Phuket is a popular tourist destination in southern Thailand. It is an
enormous island and the numerous beach towns are vacation spots for Australians
and Russians, among others. We realized the size of the island during our
45-minute drive from the airport to the hotel. We arrived and headed to the
beach for subpar Pad Thai (compared to what we had made in the Mai Kaidee cooking
class.) After the early dinner, we swam in the Andaman Sea, which is apparently
the sea off the west coast of Thailand. Trivia fact. The sea was churning due
to a typhoon/tropical storm hitting Myanmar (Burma) to the north. The wind was
getting on it but there were some solid swells throwing rights with monster
tubes, and obviously we were all frothing uncontrollably. That was some
hardcore butchered Cali surfer lingo, you might be able to Google translate it.
We headed back to the hotel for an early night and some much
needed air conditioning. To our luck, the power went out. Apparently the island
has been experiencing rolling blackouts for a while and need to rewire
something or another. After five minutes, the bright, cool rooms turned into
dark, sweat factories. Sweat factories minus the whole working and child labor
ordeal. As you know, time flies when you are suffering from heat stroke and
have nothing to entertain you, so the hour and a half wasn’t that bad.
The next day we met up with Señor Sam, who was residing just
up the hill, and we all made the intense two-minute hike to the beach. We got
burnt, hiked a mountain, body surfed, drank chilled beverages, Coco got to hold (and get bit by) a small monkey-like creature and buy sweet shawl thingies from a lady walking
around.
The beach was nice; I could see the place going wild in their tourist
season. We were four of about twenty people on the entire beach. We met an
English couple, the husband of which worked for a major oil company and told us
a variety of crazy stories about his job as health and safety inspector for oil
field/refineries all over the world (Iraq).
I enjoyed Phuket, reminded me of Tenerife in the Grand
Canaries, and I really took the time to try to absorb the culture, especially
the Western influenced cuisine. I ate fish and chips. Twice.
The nightlife in Phuket was unbelievable, we went to a
popular tourist town called Patong and met tons of travelers from all over the
world. We played some ping pong, threw some darts, and saw a band. We met an
American promoter who showed us around and pointed out all the ‘lady-boys’
patrolling the streets. Apparently lady-boys in Thailand are the best-paid
‘women of the night’ and are reasonably respected in the community. Who would
have guessed?
The next day we spent recovering and hanging around the
hotel until our 2AM flight to Beijing. I am not sure if your geography of Asia
is as flawless as mine, but Beijing is flipping far from Phuket. As we prepared
for our quick 9-hour redeye across the Asian continent I looked around at the
rest of the travelers sitting with us in the airport. As one would expect, all
Asians. There was a melting pot of different cultures; Thais, Chinese,
Malaysian, and… others. Who am I kidding? They all looked the same. I know,
blatant ignorance, but really, I couldn’t tell. With a last name like Lee, I
should really be more familiar with Asian culture. Maybe next time.
So that flight was literally the worse flight I have ever
been on. And by ‘literally,’ I mean it in the most literal sense. I felt graced
to be placed in the middle seat of the awfully small plane. I guess because it
was an Asian airline, the legroom and seat size were fitted to the average
Asian height. We take off, lights go down, and the uncomfortable battle of
sleep begins. I kept shifting between trying to lay my head down on the tray
table and sitting straight up. After the second shift, I heard a groan from
behind me. After the next shift I got a poke from behind. Twenty minutes later,
I shifted back to sitting up, I guess a little suddenly, and I heard a fury of
groans and shouts from behind me along with about three minutes of seat
shoving. I can only assume the person behind me was sleeping on the tray table and
kept waking up when I shifted positions. As you can guess, I sat like a statue
for the next five hours of the flight as Robert and Clayton dazed peacefully to
my sides. It was blissful.
Next stop, Beijing. We arrived half dead and had a crazy
negotiation process with the cabby to get us to the hotel. The Chinese cab
drivers were the absolute hardest to deal with. A Thai cabby conveniently
forgot how to speak English when I asked for change, but the Chinese cabbys
that we had refused to look at maps, and wouldn’t you guess, couldn’t read a
word of English. They also ‘couldn’t figure out’ the directions written in
Chinese and had to drive in circles around our destination until we pointed at
it and made them stop.
We did a bike tour of Beijing along with a Swedish family of
four who live in Singapore and speak perfect English, and an Asian couple. I
automatically assumed the Asian couple couldn’t speak English, like the
thousands of other Asians I had come in contact with on the trip. That was
until the guy spoke up in an American accent and told me he and his girlfriend
were from Texas, small world.
On the tour we saw a ton of magnificent gold palaces, tons
of interesting stores and restaurants, and even rode through Tiananmen Square.
Robert and Clayton each got pulled away from our group to have their pictures
taken with Asian strangers. I do believe I heard the picture-takers mumble
George Clooney and Owen Wilson under their breath. I must have been riding too
fast and doing too many neat tricks on my bike to get stopped for my picture.
The next day we had a trip planned to the Great Wall. Robert
wasn’t feeling too well, looks like we have the second winner (loser) to the Saigon
Squirts Challenge (Diarrhea, incase you haven’t been keeping up). I joined
Clayton and Coco on our wondrous government-organized tour to the wall. We got
in our tour van and they took us immediately to the jade factory. First
question the tour guide asks, “Did you know the Beijing Olympic medal had jade
in it?” Me neither, whoops. They gave us
a five-minute tour of the factory, and then shoved us into the show room to buy
their products. They followed us around like we were going to steal stuff,
telling us everything we looked at was beautiful and perfect for us. I had to
buy a little snake, my zodiac symbol, in order to get out of there in one
piece.
Next we stopped at an emperor’s tomb in the hills, and then
headed to the Great Wall. It was a lengthy drive from the city, and when we
arrived, we were put in a chair lift to get to the top of the hill. The view
was amazing, the steps of the wall were tiny and steep, and there were venders
every so many yards yelling at us to buy water and beer. I did see a few people
who were hiking the wall, which seemed like an impressive feat. The wall was
enormous and stretched as far as I could see. It rose and dropped with the
terrain of China and looked almost impossible to pass. The Great Wall was by
far the coolest thing I saw in Asia.
Coco vandalized the wall, I saw her. Hopefully China isn’t
spying on this blog as much as the US government is spying on this blog. And I
hope these Chinese spies can’t crack the complicated codename Coco. What a
boring job for the NSA dude reading this blog, actually, I guess it could be
worse; it could be a blog about a cat.
After we spent some time on the wall, we were given the
choice to ride the toboggan down to the bottom, or take the rickety chair lift
back down. Toboggan it was. We sat on individual little medal sleds equipped
with a joystick (brake) between our legs. We were shoved down a curvy medal
track one by one by an aggressive Chinese woman. Clayton was behind me and
decided it was his job to try to crash into the back of me on the way down. I
was going as fast as I could and the employees kept yelling at both of us to
slow down. I had to slow down when the lady ahead of me (going as fast as she
could manage) turned her head with a look of horror and said something to me in
foreign language. We got to the bottom and waited five painstaking minutes for
Coco to appear, she had gotten stuck half way down. J
After the wall we were taken to a restaurant and ate
traditional Chinese food in a ‘family style’ manner. I even used chop sticks,
well attempted to. Apparently, contrary to popular belief, you put both
chopsticks in one hand, not one in each hand. Silly Asian culture.
Next we were given a three-minute tour of a silk factory,
then lead into their massive silk showroom/store. I managed to squeeze out of
there without buying anything. And our last stop was at a tea factory, where
again we were rushed through the tour, then allowed to try a few teas. By this
time, we had all caught on to their tactics and were finished with buying
touristy products. We almost got guilt tripped into buying some tea when a
worker told us our tour guide would get into trouble for not selling any tea to
anyone in her group. Communism is fun.
We returned to our hotel, met up with Robert, who was
feeling much better, and headed out to grab a taxi in the rain. No taxis would
take us to the restaurant we had chosen, apparently it was too close and not
worth it to the drivers. It was fifteen miles away. So long story short, we had
cheap pizza and wine for dinner on our last night in Beijing.
At this point in the trip, Coco departed back to the ole U S
and A, and Robert, Clayton, and I headed down the coast to Shanghai. We had a
business conference to attend there and were excited to try out the cheap
custom suits we got in Thailand. Arriving at the airport was OK until we had to
deal with Chinese taxi drivers again. The nice man was going to offer us a van
cab for about a hundred dollars, but we decided to take our chances with the
taxis. We managed to get to the general area of our hotel, then asked a young
doorman at the Radisson for directions.
Shanghai felt like New York. It was an International city
with heavy Western influence. As we arrived at our hotel, we saw that the Delta
crew was staying at the same place. It was immediately obvious how different
the young and attractive flight attendants of the Asian airlines looked
compared to the raggedy old Delta flight attendants.
We were the best-dressed (and best looking) guys at the
conference. I got to experience my first full-fledged international business
conference. Half of the presentations were in Chinese and we had little
earpieces through which we could hear the live translation. I learned a good
deal, especially the fact the Google is blocked in China, so the majority of
the presentations had to do with Baidu, the major Chinese search engine.
We farted around in Shanghai in between conference sessions.
We checked out their black market and ‘did not’ by some knock off items. The
bargaining was high level, we had to bring our A game. I have never been so rude
to a middle aged woman in my life, but she was going to charge me at least ten
times what I would have paid if I wasn’t. I put my foot down, raised my voice,
and got my knock-off Beats headphones for ten dollars. They died three weeks
later.
One evening we walked into our hotel and through the bar.
Clayton nudged me and pointed to the bar and said, “Isn’t that the guy from
N-SYNC?” I looked the guy over and agree. We talked about how cool it was that
N-SYNC was in our hotel as we passed the bodyguards. It was only when got back
to our room and looked it up we realized it was the guy from the Backstreet
Boys. Kevin, to be exact. I hope Kevin and his guards didn’t hear our mistake.
They did though, I’m sure of it. So the Backstreet Boys were starting off their
International tour in Shanghai and the lobby became full of teenage Asian girls
all desperate for autographs. We saw Nick Carter come strolling out and pose
for the picture with the fans, I made my way over for one, but was just a
little too late. Next time.
Shanghai was a good end to the trip; it felt like we were
almost back in the US. We went to a brewery restaurant named Mr. Beer. I don’t
know how that managed to suck us in. We stumbled into a Whiskey Bar in which
the staff were playing their best attempt at American music, country music.
(gag) Our flight home was a quick 12-hour hop across the Pacific. I sat next to
an Asian lady who didn’t speak a lick of English, haha imagine going to a
foreign country and not knowing any of their language. What a joke. Robert sat
next to an Indian guy who didn’t speak English as well. Clayton sat in the back
of the plane next to who knows, he was too preoccupied. He was the third winner
(loser) of the Saigon Squirts challenge. Although I won the challenge, he gets
an honorable mention because it hit him on the 12-hour flight back to the US.
All in all, amazing trip—got to see a ton of places,
experience many new cultures, and meet a bunch of new people. While I poked fun
at the cultures and differences I experienced, I have the utmost respect for
them and my eyes have been opened to the lives of individuals on the opposite
side of our planet. If I could go back, I would like to see more of the islands
of Thailand, travel to North Vietnam, and visit Singapore. I would highly
recommend a visit out to the Far East if you ever get the opportunity. While I
have given a rough summary of our trip, there are a handful of stories that
didn’t make the blog; those will only be told face-to-face over a cold beer.
